Covid in China “explodes” again, conditions are stressful again

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The city of Beijing has been hit again by an increase in cases of Covid-19. As a result, this Chinese capital must be placed under a “zero-Covid” lockdown, where streets are empty, shopping malls quiet and residents keep their distance.

A week after leaders eased the country’s restrictive Covid policies, Beijing was immediately hit by a significant increase in Covid cases.

The impact of the outbreak on the city was seen in the upscale Sanlitun shopping district on Tuesday. There, the usually crowded shops and restaurants have no customers and only offer take-out food.

Similar conditions have occurred throughout Beijing. Offices, shops and residential communities have reported shortages of staff or shift work arrangements as many employees have fallen ill with the virus. Meanwhile, others live and work from home so as not to get infected.

A community worker said 21 out of 24 workers at his Beijing office of the neighborhood committee, which is charged with coordinating housing issues and activities, had fallen ill in recent days.

“Because most of our employers were infected, we weren’t given much work,” said employee, Sylvia Sun. CNN InternationalThursday (12/15/2022).

“The (normal) events, the talks, the performances, the parent-child activities definitely won’t happen.”

On Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) gave up monitoring all new Covid cases and announced that asymptomatic infections would no longer be included in the daily case count.

“It is impossible to know precisely the true number of asymptomatic infections,” the NHC said in the advisory, citing a decline in official testing rates.

Authorities reported 2,249 symptomatic Covid cases nationwide for the previous day on Wednesday morning, 20% of which were detected in the capital. These numbers are also believed to be impacted by the reduction in testing. But the overall number of cases in the Chinese capital could be many times higher than that recorded.

The city’s main hospital had registered 19,000 patients with flu symptoms from Dec. 5 to 11, more than six times the previous week’s number, a health official said.

The number of patients who visited the fever clinic was 16 times more on Sunday than in the previous week. In China, where there is no strong primary care system, visiting the hospital is common for minor ailments.

Sun Chunlan, the senior Chinese official in charge of managing the Covid, said there have so far been only 50 severe and critical cases in the hospital, most of which had underlying health conditions.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]